Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, began rolling out support for Apple Pay last month. Kroger had been a longtime Apple Pay holdout, but its decision to finally adopt Apple’s payment platform has put a renewed amount of pressure on another major holdout: Walmart.
Walmart continues to resist Apple Pay
Walmart, like Kroger before it, has refused to support Apple Pay and, instead, continues to push its own Walmart Pay platform. Whereas Apple Pay is contactless and requires users to simply tap their iPhone or Apple Watch on the payment terminal, Walmart Pay relies on QR codes instead.
Walmart launched Walmart Pay across the United States way back in 2016. Since then, the platform has been slow to gain widespread adoption. You certainly hear a lot more Walmart shoppers begging for Apple Pay than you do praising Walmart Pay. Walmart, of course, has tried to justify its decision by making the bizarre claim that Walmart Pay is more popular than Apple Pay.
It’s possible that Kroger’s decision to finally get with the times and roll out Apple Pay will finally sway Walmart to do the same. Regardless of what Walmart is thinking internally, a quick search on Twitter shows just how frustrated shoppers are with the lack of Apple Pay support at its stores.
“Walmart is so dumb for not having Apple Pay,” one user posted on Twitter today. “Walmart is still childish for not taking Apple Pay,” another writes. For some shoppers, Walmart’s decision not to accept Apple Pay has simply meant they shop at other retailers such as Target instead.
9to5Mac reached out to Walmart for comment on whether it plans to adopt Apple Pay last month, following news of Kroger’s change of heart. The company has not responded to that request for comment.
Walmart is by far the biggest Apple Pay holdout in the United States nowadays. Other notable chains that still don’t support the payment option include Home Depot and H-E-B. Neither of those companies has shown any intention of changing their stances.
I’m fully aware that it’s within Walmart’s right to support its own proprietary payment platform rather than Apple’s. After all, I cover Apple for a living, so I’m very familiar with how resistant a company can be toward adopting technology widely used by its competitors.
On an infinite time scale, anything is possible, I suppose. Do you have any hope of Walmart supporting Apple Pay? Let us know in the comments.
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